Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs

The metal, after being melted, was run into moulds of stone or clay. It was in this way that most of the gold and silver ornaments were manufactured which we see represented in the sculptures. Stone moulds for ear-rings have been found on the site of Nineveh, and the inscriptions contain many references to jewelry. The gold was also worked by the hand into beaded patterns, or incised like the silver seals, some of which have come down to us. Most of the gold was originally brought from the north; in the fifteenth century before our era the gold mines in the desert on the eastern side of Egypt provided the precious metal for the nations of Western Asia.

A document found among the records of the trading firm of Murasu at Nippur, in the fifth century B.C., shows that the goldsmith was required to warrant the excellence of his work before handing it over to the customer, and it may be presumed that the same rule held good for other trades also. The document in question is a guarantee that an emerald has been so well set in a ring as not to drop out for twenty years, and has been translated as follows by Professor Hilprecht: “Bel-akh-iddina and Bel-sunu, the sons of Bel, and Khatin, the son of Bazuzu, have made the following declaration to Bel-nadin-sumu, the son of Murasu: As to the gold ring set with an emerald, we guarantee that for twenty years the emerald will not fall out of the ring. If it should fall out before the end of twenty years, Bel-akh-iddina [and the two others] shall pay Bel-nadin-sumu an indemnity of ten manehs of silver.” Then come the names of seven witnesses and of the clerk who drew up the deed, and the artisans add their nail-marks in place of seals.

Many of the articles of daily use in the houses of the people, such as knives, tools of all kinds, bowls, dishes, and the like, were made of copper or bronze. They were, however, somewhat expensive, and as late as the reign of Cambyses we find that a copper libation-bowl and cup cost as much as 4 manehs 9 shekels, (£37 7s.), and about the same time 22 shekels (£3 3s.) were paid for two copper bowls 7½ manehs in weight. If the weight in this case were equivalent to that of the silver maneh the cost would have been nearly 4d. per ounce. It must be remembered that, as in the modern East, the workman expected the metal to be furnished by his customer; and accordingly we hear of 3 manehs of iron being given to a smith to be made into rods for bows. Three manehs of iron were also considered sufficient for the manufacture of six swords, two oboe-rings, and two bolts. All this, of course, belongs to the age of the second Babylonian empire, when iron had taken the place of bronze.

The carpenter's trade is another handicraft to which there is frequent allusion in the texts. Already, before the days of Sargon of Akkad, beams of wood were fetched from distant lands for the temples and palaces of Chaldea. Cedar was brought from the mountains of Amanus and Lebanon, and other trees from Elam. The palm could be used for purely architectural purposes, for boarding the crude bricks of the walls together, or to serve as the rafters of the roof, but it was unsuitable for doors or for the wooden panels with which the chambers of the temple or palace were often lined. For such purposes the cedar was considered best, and burnt panels of it have been found in the sanctuary of Ingurisa at Tello. Down to the latest days panels of wood were valuable in Babylonia, and we find it stipulated in the leases of houses that the lessee shall be allowed to remove the doors he has put up at his own expense.

But the carpenter's trade was not confined to inartistic work. From the earliest age of Babylonian history he was skilled in making household furniture, which was often of a highly artistic description. On a seal-cylinder, now in the British Museum, the King is represented as seated on a chair which, like those of ancient Egypt, rested on the feet of oxen, and similarly artistic couches and chests, inlaid with ivory or gold, were often to be met with in the houses of the rich. The Assyrian sculptures show to what perfection the art of the joiner had attained at the time when Nineveh was the mistress of the civilized world.

The art of the stone-cutter had attained an even higher perfection at a very remote date. Indeed, the seal-cylinders of the time of Sargon of Akkad display a degree of excellence and finish which was never surpassed at any subsequent time. The same may be said of the bas-relief of Naram-Sin discovered at Diarbekr. The combination of realism and artistic finish displayed in it was never equalled even by the bas-reliefs of Assyria, admirable as they are from many points of view.

The early stone-cutters of Chaldea tried their skill upon the hardest materials, and engraved upon them the minutest and most delicate designs. Hæmatite was a favorite material for the seal-cylinder; the statues of Tello are carved out of diorite, which was brought from the Sinaitic Peninsula, and stones of similar hardness were manufactured into vases. That such work should have been attempted in an age when iron and steel were as yet unknown seems to us astonishing. Even bronze was scarce, and the majority of the tools employed by the workmen were made of copper, which was artificially hardened when in use. Emery powder or sand was also used, and the lathe had long been known. When iron was first introduced into the workshops of Babylonia is doubtful. That the metal had been recognized at a very early period is clear from the fact that in the primitive picture-writing of the country, out of which the cuneiform syllabary developed, it was denoted by two characters, representing respectively “heaven” and “metal.” It would seem, therefore, that the first iron with which the inhabitants of the Babylonian plain were acquainted was of meteoric origin.

In the age of the Egyptian empire in Asia, at the beginning of the seventeenth century B.C., iron was passing into general use. Objects of iron are referred to in the inscriptions, and a couple of centuries later we hear of iron chariots among the Canaanites, and of ironsmiths in Palestine, who repair the shattered vehicles of Egyptian travellers in that country. It must have been at this time that the bronzesmith in Babylonia became transformed into an ironsmith.

Carving in ivory was another trade followed in Babylonia and Assyria. The carved ivories found on the site of Nineveh are of great beauty, and from a very early epoch ivory was used for the handles of sceptres, or for the inlaid work of wooden furniture. The “ivory couches” of Babylonia made their way to the West along with the other products of Babylonian culture, and Amos (vi. 4) denounces the wealthy nobles of Israel who “lie upon beds of ivory.” Thothmes III. of Egypt, in the sixteenth century B.C., hunted the elephant on the banks of the Euphrates, not far from Carchemish, and, as late as about 1100 B.C., Tiglath-pileser I. of Assyria speaks of doing the same. In the older period of Babylonian history, therefore, the elephant would have lived on the northern frontier of Babylonian domination, and its tusks would have been carried down the Euphrates along with other articles of northern trade.

Quite as old as the trade of the carver in ivory was that of the porcelain-maker. The walls of the palaces and temples of Babylonia and Assyria were adorned with glazed and enamelled tiles on which figures and other designs were drawn in brilliant colors; they were then covered with a metallic glaze and fired. Babylonia, in fact, seems to have been the original home of the enamelled tile and therewith of the manufacture of porcelain. It was a land of clay and not of stone, and while it thus became necessary to ornament the plain mud wall of the house, the clay brick itself, when painted and protected by a glaze, was made into the best and most enduring of ornaments. The enamelled bricks of Chaldea and Assyria are among the most beautiful relics of Babylonian civilization that have survived to us, and those which adorned the Persian palace of Susa, and are now in the Museum of the Louvre, are unsurpassed by the most elaborate productions of modern skill.

Our enumeration of Babylonian trades would not be complete without mention being made of that of the brick-maker. The manufacture of bricks was indeed one of the chief industries of the country, and the brick-maker took the position which would be taken by the mason elsewhere. He erected all the buildings of Babylonia. The walls of the temples themselves were of brick. Even in Assyria the slavish imitation of Babylonian models caused brick to remain the chief building material of a kingdom where stone was plentiful and clay comparatively scarce. The brick-yards stood on the outskirts of the cities, where the ground was low and where a thick bed of reeds grew in a pond or marsh. These reeds were an important requisite for the brick-maker's art; when dried they formed a bed on which the bricks rested while they were being baked by the sun; cut into small pieces they were mixed with the clay in order to bind it together; and if the bricks were burnt in a kiln the reeds were used as fuel. They were accordingly artificially cultivated, and fetched high prices. Thus, in the fourteenth year of Nabonidos, we hear of 2 shekels being given for 200 bundles of reeds for building a bridge across a canal, and a shekel for 100 bundles to be made into torches. At the same time 55 shekels were paid for 8,000 loads of brick. The possession of a bed of reeds added to the value of an estate, and it is, therefore, always specified in deeds relating to the sale of property. One, situated at Sippara, was owned by a scribe, Arad-Bel, who has drawn up several contracts, as we learn incidentally from a document dated in the seventh year of Cyrus, in which Ardi, the grandson of “the brick-maker,” agrees to pay two-thirds of the bricks he makes to Arad-Bel, on condition of being allowed to manufacture them in the reed-bed of the latter. This is described as adjoining “the reed-bed of Bel-baladan and the plantation of the Sun-god.”

The brick-maker was also a potter, and the manifold products of the potter's skill, for which Babylonia was celebrated, were manufactured in the corner of the brick-field. Here also were made the tablets, which were handed to the professional scribe or the ordinary citizen to be written upon, and so take the place of the papyrus of ancient Egypt or the paper of to-day. The brick-maker was thus not only a potter, but the provider of literary materials as well. He might even be compared with the printer of the modern world, since texts were occasionally cut in wood and so impressed upon moulds of clay, which, after being hardened, were used as stamps, by means of which the texts could be multiplied, impressions of them being mechanically reproduced on other tablets or cylinders of clay.

Another Babylonian trade which must be noticed was that of the vintner. Wine was made from dates as well as from grapes, while beer, called sikaru, was also manufactured, probably from some cereal grain. Mention is found of a “wine” that was made from sesame. The vine was not a native of Babylonia, but must have been introduced into it from the highlands of Armenia at a very early date, as it was known there long before the days of Sargon of Akkad. Large quantities of wine and beer were drunk in both Babylonia and Assyria, and reference has already been made to the bas-relief in which the Assyrian King, Assur-bani-pal, and his Queen are depicted drinking wine in the gardens of his palace, while the head of his vanquished foe, the King of Elam, hangs from the branch of a neighboring tree. A receipt, dated the eleventh day of Iyyar, in the first year of Nabonidos, is for the conveyance of “75 qas of meal and 63 qas of beer for the sustenance of the artisans;” and in the thirty-eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar 20 shekels were paid for “beer,” the amount of which, however, is unfortunately not stated. But two “large” casks of new wine cost 11 shekels, and five other smaller casks 10 shekels. Moreover, the inventory of goods to be handed over to the slave Khunnatu, in the sixth year of Cambyses, includes fifty casks of “good beer,” which, together with the cup with which it was drawn, was valued at 60 shekels (£9).

Whether any grape-wine was made in Babylonia itself was questionable; at any rate, the greater part of that which was drunk there was imported from abroad, more especially from Armenia and Syria. The wines of the Lebanon were specially prized, the wine of Khilbunu, or Helbon, holding a chief place among them. The wines, some of which were described as “white,” were distinguished by the names of the localities where they were made or in which the vines were grown, and Nebuchadnezzar gives the following list of them: The wine of Izalla, in Armenia; of Tuhimmu, of Zimmini, of Helbon, of Amabanu, of the Shuhites, of Bit-Kubati, in Elam; of Opis and of Bitati, in Armenia. To these another list adds: “The wine reserved for the king's drinking,” and the wines of Nazahzê, of Lahû, and of the Khabur.

The wine was kept in wine-cellars, and among the Assyrian letters that have come down to us are some from the cellarers of the King. In one of them it is stated that the wine received in the month Tebet had been bottled, and that there was no room in the royal cellars in which it could be stored. The King is therefore asked to allow new cellars to be made.

The various trades formed guilds or corporations, and those who wished to enter one of these had to be apprenticed for a fixed number of years in order to learn the craft. As we have seen, slaves could be thus apprenticed by their owners and in this way become members of a guild. What the exact relation was between the slave and the free members of a trading guild we do not know, but it is probable that the slave was regarded as the representative of his master or mistress, who accordingly became, instead of himself, the real member of the corporation. We perhaps have a parallel in modern England, where a person can be elected a member of one of the “city companies,” or trade guilds, without being in any way connected with the trade himself. Since women in Babylonia were able to carry on a business, there would be no obstacle to a slave being apprenticed to a trade by his mistress. Hence it is that we find a Babylonian lady named Nubtâ, in the second year of Cyrus, apprenticing a slave to a weaver for five years. Nubtâ engaged to provide the apprentice with clothing and 1 qa (nearly 2 quarts) of grain each day. As in ancient Greece a quart of grain was considered a sufficient daily allowance for a man, the slave's allowance would seem to have been ample. The teacher was to be heavily fined if he failed to teach the trade, or overworked the apprentice and so made him unable to learn it, the fine being fixed at 6 qas (about 10 quarts) per diem. Any infringement of the contract on either side was further to be visited with a penalty of 30 shekels of silver.

As 30 shekels of silver were equivalent to £4 10s., 6 qas of wheat at the time when the contract was drawn up would have cost about 1s. 3d. Under Nebuchadnezzar we find 12 qas, or the third part of an ardeb, of sesame sold for half a shekel, which would make the cost of a single quart a little more than a penny. In the twelfth year of Nabonidos 60 shekels, or £9, were paid for 6 gur of sesame, and since the gur contained 5 ardebs, according to Dr. Oppert's calculation, the quart of sesame would have been a little less than 1½d. When we come to the reign of Cambyses we hear of 6½ shekels being paid for 2 ardebs, or about 100 quarts, of wheat; that would give 2½d. as the approximate value of a single qa. It would therefore have cost Nubtâ about 2½d. a day to feed a slave.

It must, however, be remembered that the price of grain varied from year to year. In years of scarcity the price rose; when the crops were plentiful it necessarily fell. To a certain extent the annual value was equalized by the large exportation of grain to foreign countries, to which reference is made in many of the contract-tablets; the institution of royal or public store-houses, moreover, called sutummê, tended to keep the price of it steady and uniform. Nevertheless, bad seasons sometimes occurred, and there were consequent fluctuations in prices. This was more especially the case as regards the second staple of Babylonian food and standard of value—dates. These seem to have been mostly consumed in Babylonia itself, and, though large quantities of them were accumulated in the royal storehouses, it was upon a smaller scale than in the case of the grain. Hence we need not be surprised if we find that while in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar a shekel was paid for 1-1/3 ardebs of dates, or about a halfpenny a quart, in the thirtieth year of the same reign the price had fallen to one-twenty-fifth of a penny per quart. A little later, in the first year of Cambyses, 100 gur of dates was valued at 2½ shekels (7s. 6d.), the gur containing 180 qas, which gives 2d. per each qa, and in the second year of Cyrus a receipt for the payment of “the workmen of the overseer” states that the following amount of dates had been given from “the royal store-house” for their “food” during the month Tebet: “Fifty gur for the 50 workmen, 10 gur for 10 shield-bearers, 2 gur for the overseer, 1 gur for the chief overseer; in all, 63 gurs of dates.” It was consequently calculated that a workman would consume a gur of dates a month, the month consisting of thirty days.

About the same period, in the first year of Cyrus, after his conquest of Babylon, we hear of two men receiving 2 pi 30 qas (102 qas) of grain for the month Tammuz. Each man accordingly received a little over a qa a day, the wage being practically the same as that paid by Nubtâ to the slave. On the other hand, a receipt dated in the fifteenth year of Nabonidos is for 2 pi (72 qas) of grain, and 54 qas of dates were paid to the captain of a boat for the conveyance of mortar, to serve as “food” during the month Tebet. As “salt and vegetables” were also added, it is probable that the captain was expected to share the food with his crew. A week previously 8 shekels had been given for 91 gur of dates owed by the city of Pallukkatum, on the Pallacopas canal, to the temple of Uru at Sippara, but the money was probably paid for porterage only. At all events, five years earlier a shekel and a quarter had been paid for the hire of a boat which conveyed three oxen and twenty-four sheep, the offering made by Belshazzar “in the month Nisan to Samas and the gods of Sippara,” while 60 qas of dates were assigned to the two boatmen for food. This would have been a qa of dates per diem for each boatman, supposing the voyage was intended to last a month. In the ninth year of Nabonidos 2 gur of dates were given to a man as his nourishment for two months, which would have been at the rate of 6 qas a day. In the thirty-second year of the same reign 36 qas of dates were valued at a shekel, or a penny a qa.

In the older period of Babylonian history prices were reckoned in grain, and, as might be expected, payment was made in kind rather than in coin. In the reign of Ammi-zadok, for instance, 3 homers 24⅔ qas of oil, though valued at 20⅔ shekels of silver, were actually bought with “white Kurdish slaves,” it being stipulated that if the slaves were not forthcoming the purchaser would have to pay for the oil in cash. A thousand years later, under Merodach-nadin-akhi, cash had become the necessary medium of exchange. A cart and harness were sold for 100 shekels, six riding-horses for 300 shekels, one “ass from the West” for 130 shekels, one steer for 30 shekels, 34 gur 56 qas of grain for 137 shekels, 2 homers 40 qas of oil for 16 shekels, two long-sleeved robes for 12 shekels, and nine shawls for 18 shekels.

From this time forward we hear no more of payment in kind, except where wages were paid in food, or where tithes and other offerings were made to the temples. Though the current price of wheat continued to fix the market standard of value, business was conducted by means of stamped money. The shekel and the maneh were the only medium of exchange.

There are numerous materials for ascertaining the average prices of commodities in the later days of Babylonian history. We have already seen what prices were given for sheep and wool, as well as the cost of some of the articles of household use. In the thirty-eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar 100 gur of wheat were valued at only 1 maneh—that is to say, the qa of wheat was worth only the hundredth part of a shilling—while at the same time the price of dates was exactly one-half that amount. On the other hand, in the fourth year of Cambyses 72 qas of sesame were sold at Sippara for 6½ shekels, or 19s. 6d. This would make the cereal worth approximately 1½d. a quart, the same price as that at which it was sold in the twelfth year of Nabonidos. In the second year of Nergal-sharezer twenty-one strings of onions fetched as much as 10 shekels, and a year later 96 shekels were given for onion bulbs for planting. Sheep in the reign of Cambyses fetched 7 and 7¼ shekels each, while 10 shekels were given for an ox, and 22½ shekels for a steer two years old. In the twenty-fourth year of Nebuchadnezzar 13 shekels had been paid for a full-grown ox, and as much as 67 shekels in the fourth year of Nabonidos, while in the first year of Evil-Merodach a cow was sold for 15 shekels. The ass was in more request, especially if it was of “Western” breed. In the reign of Merodach-nadin-akhi, it will be remembered, as much as 130 shekels had been paid for one of these, as compared with 30 shekels given for an ox, and though at a subsequent period the prices were lower, the animal was still valued highly. In the year of the death of Cyrus a Babylonian gentleman bought “a mouse-colored ass, eight years old, without blemish,” for 50 shekels (£7 10s.), and shortly afterward another was purchased for 32 shekels. At the same time, however, an ass of inferior quality went for only 13 shekels. When we consider that only three years later a shekel was considered sufficient wages for a butcher for a month's work, we can better estimate what these prices signify. Nevertheless, the value of the ass seems to have been steadily going down in Babylonia; at all events, in the fourth year of Nabonidos, 1 maneh, or 60 shekels, was demanded for one, and the animal does not seem to have been in any way superior to another which was sold for 50 shekels a few years afterward.

Clothes and woven stuffs were naturally of all prices. In the time of Nebuchadnezzar a cloak or overcoat used by the mountaineers cost only 4½ shekels, though under Cambyses we hear of 58 shekels being charged for eight of the same articles of dress, which were supplied to the “bowmen” of the army. Three years earlier 7½ shekels had been paid for two of these cloaks. About the same time ten sleeved gowns cost 35 shekels.

Metal was more expensive. As has already been noticed, a copper libation-bowl and cup were sold for 4 manehs 9 shekels (£37 7s.), and two copper dishes, weighing 7½ manehs (19 pounds 8 ounces. troy), were valued at 22 shekels. The skilled labor expended upon the work was the least part of the cost. The workman was supplied with his materials by the customer, and received only the value of his labor. What this was can be gathered from a receipt dated the 11th day of Chisleu, in the fourteenth year of Nabonidos, recording the payment of 4 shekels to “the ironsmith,” Suqâ, for making certain objects out of 3⅚ manehs of iron which had been handed over to him.

The cost of bricks and reeds has already been described. Bitumen was more valuable. In the fourteenth year of Nabonidos a contract was made to supply five hundred loads of it for 50 shekels, while at the same time the wooden handle of an ax was estimated at one shekel. Five years previously only 2 shekels had been given for three hundred wooden handles, but they were doubtless intended for knives. In the sixth year of Nabonidos the grandson of the priest of Sippara undertook to supply “bricks, reeds, beams, doors, and chopped straw for building the house of Rimut” for 12 manehs of silver, or £108. The wages of the workmen were not included in the contract.